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Translated by Bl. Jackson.
St Basil the Great Resources Online and in Print
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 104
XLV. If any one, after taking the name of Christianity, insults Christ, he gets no good from the name.
XLVI. The woman who unwillingly marries a man deserted at the time by his wife, and is afterwards repudiated, because of the return of the former to him, commits fornication, but involuntarily. She will, therefore, not be prohibited from marriage; but it is better if she remain as she is. [2716]
XLVII. Encratitae, [2717] Saccophori, [2718] and Apotactitae [2719] are not regarded in the same manner as Novatians, since in their case a canon has been pronounced, although different; while of the former nothing has been said. All these I re-baptize on the same principle. If among you their re-baptism is forbidden, for the sake of some arrangement, nevertheless let my principle prevail. Their heresy is, as it were, an offshoot of the Marcionites, abominating, as they do, marriage, refusing wine, and calling God's creature polluted. We do not therefore receive them into the Church, unless they be baptized into our baptism. Let them not say that they have been baptized into Father, Son and Holy Ghost, inasmuch as they make God the author of evil, after the example of Marcion and the rest of the heresies. Wherefore, if this be determined on, more bishops ought to meet together in one place and publish the canon in these terms, that action may be taken without peril, and authority given to answers to questions of this kind.
XLVIII. The woman who has been abandoned by her husband, ought, in my judgment, to remain as she is. The Lord said, "If any one leave [2720] his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, he causeth her to commit adultery;" [2721] thus, by calling her adulteress, He excludes her from intercourse with another man. For how can the man being guilty, as having caused adultery, and the woman, go without blame, when she is called adulteress by the Lord for having intercourse with another man?
XLIX. Suffering violation should not be a cause of condemnation. So the slave girl, if she has been forced by her own master, is free from blame.
L. There is no law as to trigamy: a third marriage is not contracted by law. We look upon such things as the defilements of the Church. But we do not subject them to public condemnation, as being better than unrestrained fornication. [2722]
[2716] This is Can. xciii. of the Council in Trullo.
[2717] Generally reckoned rather as Manichaeans than as here by Basil as Marcionites, but dualism was common to both systems.
[2718] A Manichaean sect, who led a solitary life. Death is threatened against them in a law of Theodosius dated a.d. 322 (Cod. Theod. lib. xvi. tit. 5, leg. 9), identified by the Ben. Ed. with the Hydroparastatae.
[2719] A Manichaean sect. cf. Epiphanius ii. 18. In the work of Macarius Magnes, published in Paris 1876, they are identified with the Encratites.
[2720] katalipe for apoluse.
[2721] Matt. v. 22.
[2722] cf. however Canon iv., where trigamy is called polygamy or at best a limited fornication, and those guilty of it subjected to exclusion from the Eucharist.
Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/basil/letters-2.asp?pg=104
